The culture of Finland combines indigenous heritage, as represented for example by the country's national languages Finnish (a Uralic language) and Swedish (a Germanic language), and the sauna, with common Nordic and European cultural aspects. Because of its history and geographic location, Finland has been influenced by the adjacent areas, various Finnic and Baltic peoples as well as the former dominant powers of Sweden and Russia. Finnish culture is built upon the relatively ascetic environmental realities, traditional livelihoods, and heritage of egalitarianism (e.g. everyman's right, universal suffrage) and the traditionally widespread ideal of self-sufficiency (e.g. predominantly rural lifestyles and modern summer cottages).
There are cultural differences among the various regions of Finland, especially minor differences in dialect. Minorities, some of which have a status recognised by the state, such as the Sami, Swedish-speaking Finns, Karelians, Romani, Jews, and Tatars, maintain their cultural identities within Finland. Many Finns are emotionally connected to the countryside and nature, as large-scale urbanisation is a relatively recent phenomenon.
Historical overview
The Scandinavian ice sheet covered most of northern Europe. Following its recession around 8000 BC, people began arriving in what is today Finland, with a majority presumably traveling from the south and east. Recent archaeological finds also reveal the presence of the north-western Komsa culture in northern Finland to be as old as the earliest discoveries on the Norwegian coast.PEOPLE, MATERIAL CULTURE AND ENVIRONMENT IN THE NORTH Proceedings of the 22nd Nordic Archaeological Conference, University of Oulu, 18–23 August 2004 Edited by Vesa-Pekka Herva GUMMERUS KIRJAPAINO
What is today Finland belonged to the northeastern Kunda culture until around 5000 BC and the Comb Ceramic culture from about 4200–2000 BC. The Kiukainen culture appeared on the southwestern coast of Finland around 1200 BC.
From 1100 to 1200, the crown of Sweden started to incorporate Finland. However, Novgorod also attempted to gain control. Several wars occurred between 1400 and 1700 where Finland fought against Sweden, Novgorod, the Grand Duchy of Moscow, and imperial Russia. In 1721, the Nystad Peace Treaty was signed, ending Swedish dominance in the Baltic region. In 1809, Finland was annexed by Russia. However from 1809 to 1917, Finland became an autonomous Grand Duchy with the Russian Czar as the constitutional monarch. In southeastern Finland, the region of Karelia, where most of the Russo-Swedish conflicts occurred, was influenced by both cultures while remaining peripheral to both epicentres of power. The verses in Finland's national epic, the Kalevala, originate mainly from Karelia and Ingria.
The 19th century brought a feeling of national Romanticism and Nationalism throughout Europe. Finland's nationalism also grew, forming cultural identity and making control of the land a priority. An expression of Finnish identity by the University docent, A. I. Arwidsson (1791–1858), became an often quoted Fennoman credo: "Swedes we are not, Russians we do not want to become, let us, therefore, be Finns." Nationalism heightened and resulted in a declaration of full independence from Russia on 6 December 1917, Finnish Independence Day. Notably, nationalists did not consider the Swedish-speakers members of a different (Swedish) nation; in fact, many Fennomans came from Swedish-speaking families.
Ethnic groups and languages
Finns The majority ethnic group of Finland is the Finns. Most Finns speak Finnish as their mother tongue. The Finnish language is not an Indo-European language. It belongs to the Uralic language family. Finns are traditionally divided into subgroups (heimo) based on their dialect, but these groupings have only minor importance due to 20th-century urbanization and internal migration.
Swedish-speaking Finns The largest subculture in Finland is its Swedish-speaking Finns. The political party Swedish People's Party (), has traditionally had a small but important part of the Swedish-Finnish culture. The daily newspaper Hufvudstadsbladet ('Capital City Paper') is the largest Swedish daily newspaper in Finland and has its headquarters in Helsinki. The Swedish-speaking minority has been the target of harassment and discrimination in Finland. They are still considered the upper-class in Finland, especially in Helsinki, and have earned nicknames, such as "Svenska talande bättre folk" ('Swedish speaking better people'). Swedish-Finns are also sometimes referred to as "Ankkalampi" (Ankdammen or 'The Duck Pond') due to their relatively small number where everybody knows each other. Today, however, most differences are blurred (though rich, powerful Swedish-speaking families still exist) due to mixed marriages and inter-cultural homogenization and communication. The Swedish-Finnish group does have unique traditions distinct from the mainstream Finnish-speaking ones but does not live in a different society. The group has various origins, both from language switching and from immigration.
Sami
The Lapland region of the North holds the Sami population. Up to around 1500, the Sami were mainly fishermen and trappers, usually in a combination, leading a nomadic lifestyle decided by the migrations of the reindeer. Traditionally, Sami people engaged in fishing, trapping and herding reindeer. They have traditionally organized their societies differently from the Finns due to their nomadic lifestyle. Their native language is not Finnish, but one of the three Sami languages spoken in Finland. However, modern times have brought most Sami to urban areas, where they assimilate to mainstream society and speak Finnish. 10% of Sami continue herding in Northern Finland. Currently, the Sami are a 5% minority in their native Finnish Lapland.
Romani
Another nomadic group is the Finnish Roma who have existed since the 17th century. For centuries Roma men were , whereas in the post-war era they have turned to horse breeding and dealing in automobiles and scrap metal. Women traditionally engage in fortune-telling and handcrafts. Roma have been the target of harassment and discrimination in Finland. "A permanent Advisory Commission on Gypsy Affairs was set up in 1968, and in 1970 racial discrimination was outlawed through an addition to the penal code. The law punished blatant acts such as barring Gypsies from restaurants or shops or subjecting them to unusual surveillance by shopkeepers or the police.""Finland – Gypsies", The Library of Congress Country Studies; CIA World Factbook Today, financial aid is provided to improve the standard of living for 5,000–6,000 Finnish Roma.
Social beliefs
Gender equality
After examining the position of women around the world, the Washington-based Population Crisis Committee reported in 1988 that Finland, slightly behind top-ranked Sweden and just ahead of the United States, was one of the very best places in which a woman could live. The group reached this conclusion after examining the health, educational, economic, and legal conditions that affect women's lives.
When compared with women of other nations, Finnish women, who accounted for just over 50 percent of the population in the mid-1980s, did have a privileged place. They were the first in Europe to gain the franchise, and by the 1980s they routinely constituted about one-third of the membership of the Eduskunta (parliament) and held several ministerial posts. In the 1980s, about 75 percent of adult women worked outside the home; they made up about 48 percent of the workforce. Finnish women were as well educated as their male counterparts, and, in some cases, the number of women studying at the university level, for example, was slightly ahead of the number of men. In addition to an expanding welfare system, which since World War II had come to provide them with substantial assistance in the area of childbearing and child-rearing, women had made notable legislative gains that brought them closer to full equality with men.
In 1972 the was established to advise lawmakers on methods for realizing full legal equality for women. In 1983 legislation arranged that both parents were to have equal rights for custody of their children. A year later, women were granted equal rights in the establishment of their children's nationality. Henceforth any child born of a Finnish woman would have Finnish citizenship. After a very heated national debate, legislation was passed in 1985 that gave women an equal right to decide what surname or surnames they and their children would use. These advances were capped by that went into effect in early 1987 forbidding any discrimination based on sex and protecting against this discrimination. Once these laws were passed, Finnish authorities signed the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) in 1986.
In several areas, however, the country's small feminist movement maintained that the circumstances in which Finnish women lived needed to be improved. Most striking was the disparity in wages. Although women made up just under half the workforce and had a tradition of working outside the home, they earned only about two-thirds of the wages paid to men. Occupations in which women predominated, such as those of retail and office personnel, were poorly paid in contrast to those in which men constituted the majority. Despite the sexes' equal educational attainments, and despite a society where sexual differentiation played a smaller role than it did in many other countries, occupational segregation in Finland was marked. In a few of the twenty most common occupations were the two sexes equally represented. Only in occupations relating to agriculture, forestry, and school teaching was a rough parity approached, and as few as 6 percent of Finns worked in jobs where 40 to 60 percent of workers were of the opposite sex. Studies also found that equal educational levels did not—in any category of training—prevent women's wages from lagging behind those paid to men. Women tended to occupy lower positions, while males were more often supervisors or managers. This was the case everywhere, whether in schools or universities, in business, in the civil service, or politics at both the local level and the national level.
In addition to occupying a secondary position in the workplace, women had longer workdays because they performed a greater share of household tasks than did men. On the average, their workweek outside the home was several hours shorter than men's because a greater number of them were employed only part-time or worked in the service sector, where hours were shorter than they were in manufacturing. Studies have found, however, that women spent about twice as much time on housework as men—about three hours and forty minutes a day, compared with one hour and fifty minutes for men. Men did twice as many household repairs and about an equal amount of shopping, but they devoted only one-third to one-fourth as much time to cleaning, cooking, and caring for children. Given that the bulk of family chores fell to women, and that they were five times more likely than men to head a single-parent family, the shortcomings of Finland's child day-care system affected women more than it did men.